White smoke coming out of my right side exhuast pipe

I have a 97' Suzuki TL1000s, it is a good bike and has not had any
problems since I bought it four months ago, I changed oil and filters
one month ago and three days ago when turning the key on the bike, not
starting the bike, just turning the key the Oil light kept coming on,
after starting it would disappear, but I added one quart to the engine
anyway... a day later when starting the bike it run for a few minutes
than suddenly turned off and white smoke came out the right side
exhaust pipe... I turned it on again and it started to run with lots of
white smoke coming out the pipes... What happened and how do I fix?

-Marcelo

 

Do you have the owner's manual for that motorbike. It will probably
tell you whether the oil light is an oil PRESSURE light or an oil LEVEL
light...

So ar as I know, Suzuki has always had oil PRESSURE lights. Maybe you
added too much oil to the engine and it blew some of the excess oil
into the airbox...

So, open the airbox, remove the air filter and see if it's all oily.
You can't clean the oil out of a paper filter, but you can wash a
fabric/mesh air filter like a K&N or a rubber foam filter in
kerosene...

If you have a lot of oil inyour airbox and the oil level in your engine
is too high, you will have to drain the oil out and add the correct
amount of oil. That information should be right on the clutch cover by
the oil filler hole...

 

I looked at the air filter and around the air intake area and yes it had
oil all over, I have
drained all oil, changed the filter and put the bike bake together, but
when I started it, more
of the same smoke came out and it began to back fire, lots of smoke &
lots of bake fire? what
should I do?


Marcelo

 

All SV, TL, DL engines use oil pressure sensors. For the KK database.

 

I'm not familiar with your bike so I don't know if it's a water-cooled
engine or not. If the smoke is blue then it's probably oil. If the
smoke is white then it's probably water or moisture of some type. Could
it be a coolant leak? Cracked engine cylinder head and/or bad
gasket(s)/seal(s) maybe?

The other possibility might be water and/or moisture getting into your
fuel system?

 

Is the smoke blueish-white and does it linger in the air? That's oil
smoke.
YOU SHOULD CLEAN OR CHANGE THE SPARK PLUGS. An oil-fouled spark plug
would cause the engine to backfire. We call that sound "shooting ducks"
because that's what it sounds like, hunters shooting at ducks with shot
guns...(1)

If the problem was excess oil and you cleaned the airbox and filter
out, you may still have some oil in the intake tract and that should
eventually get sucked through the engine and the smoke should quit.
Just give it a little time and it may clear out...

But, if it has that much excess oil in the top end of the engine, you
might have to clean the spark plugs again and again until the oil is
all gone. And, I wouldn't recommend revving the engine up or riding
hard until it stops smoking. There's always the possiblity that excess
oil in the intake tract would cause a hydraulic lock when the engine
just can't rotate against excess oil trapped in the combustion
chamber...

So, when you clean or replace your spark plugs, be sure to push the
starter button with the plugs out and open the throttle and BLOW THE
OIL ACCUMULATION OUT OF THE CYLINDERS...

Other reasons why engines smoke are leaky valve guide oil seals and
worn out or broken piston rings. If the valve guide seals leak, the
engine smokes when first started, but stops smoking. If the piston
rings are worn out or broken, the engine will smoke all the time...

But, if the smoke is very white, and it rises and dissipates rapidly,
it may be water vapor. DOES THE SMOKE SMELL LIKE ANTI-FREEZE? Do you
find droplets of water on the spark plug nose when you remove the spark
plug from the engine when it's cold?

That would indicate something like a blown cylinder head gasket, a
cracked head or a cracked cylinder...

If you remove the radiator cap and run the engine, you'll see air
bubbles in the coolant if you have a blown gasket or cracked cylinder
head...

(1) I was watching an automobile race as the sun went down. It was a
race for older cars that were no longer competitive on the Indy Car
race circuit. But the points leader still needed points to guarantee
his championship in the vintage car season. So he was out driving his
smoking car around the race track. As the engine backfired, I saw big
orange flames come out the exhaust pipes everytime the engine "shot
ducks"...

 

If your smoke is truly white, and has a sweet smell, it is antifreeze.
Oil smoke is distinctly blue.
Dan

 

A good start would be to make sure you had exactly the right amount
of oil in the engine. Overfilling it with oil can cause a number of
problems such as foaming and/or pumping oil into places it's not
supposed to be. If there's too much, you need to get it back to
the right level.

An oil pressure light is supposed to go on when the key is turned on
and go off after the engine starts. If this is what you've got,
this was normal behavior.

I think you're in serious need of an owner's manual. Keep on winging
it without one, and you're liable to pick up a couple of very
expensive lessons in proper motorcycle maintenance. You may have
signed yourself up for one already.

 

How about overfilled crankcase (engine oil level too high)?

Or piston rings stuck by rust or other dirt or corrosion?

 

Wouldn't that be normal for an oil-pressure light?

 

We're pretty sure that's Marcello's problem...

Piston rings will stick if the engine already uses a lot of oil and
runs really hot and then the oil carburizes into a dark
chocolate-colored goo that hardens when it cools and glues the rings in
place...

Old time racers were fond of castor-based oils because they flowed
toward hot spots instead of away from them. So the rings would get hot
and the castor would gum them up with a black sticky goo...

But racers didn't care, they would tear the engine down after every
race and clean the goo out...

About the closest any petroleum oil comes to acting like that is some
of the high asphalt content West Coast oils that would leave a lot of
black sludge up under the valve covers. Pennsylvania crude oil had a
higher paraffin content and ran cleaner...

 

So then it is not something a novice like my self can work on? Is there
any way to check if it is

Marcelo

 

Have you removed the spark plugs and cleaned them or replaced them? The
most logical problem is that you over-filled your crankcase with oil
because you believed the oil light coming on indicated low oil level.
So the excess oil was blown up into the air box and it fouled the spark
plugs. That explains the backfiring...

Nothing that YOU have said leads me to believe that you have stuck
rings, I was explaining to Matt why stuck rings got stuck...

 

I will do that and see what happens then. should I crank engine when
plugs are removed to release any extra oil, or just replace or clean
plugs?

Marcelo

 

Remove the spark plugs and crank the engine over with the plugs out to
blow any excess oil out of the engine. Don't crank the engine
continuously with the starter. Just crank for five seconds at a time.
Do that several times. The starter is very expen$ive and you don't want
to overheat it by cranking for too long...

It would be nice if you could remove the fuse for the fuel pump while
you're doing this so the fuel injectors can't squirt a lot of gasoline
into the engine. If you crank the engine over while it's cold, the
brain box thinks you're trying to start the engine and it tries to
inject a very rich mixture...

Even if the spark plugs look clean, as long as you have them out of the

engine, you might as well replace them. Spark plugs have a strange way
of going bad internally. I haven't figured out what makes them do that
when they aren't dirty looking. Maybe they get moisture condensed in
them somehow and the engine won't start or it runs crappy. About $5
will get you 2 new spark plugs...

 

After removing old plugs, I cranked engine twice for five seconds each
time, no oil came out of the sparck plug holes, so I replaced with new
plugs and ran bike for about 3 minutes when the smoke began again, not
as much mind you, but still smoke, I removed plugs to see the how dirty
they had gotten, they had some darkness to the tips, so I cleaned them
and put them back in, I put the bike back together and went for a small
5 to 7 minute ride, it was cut short because the smoke began to come out
almost as bad as the first time.

Was I supossed to crank for loner and for more times?
How long should I expect to burn excess oil before it clears?
Is there a chance the if I crank engine with out spark plugs I could
damage engine timing?

Marcelo

 

Your exhaust pipe may still have a lot of oil in the bottom...

If you didn't see a lot of oil come out the spark plug hole, you should
be OK...

If you get the engine well warmed up by riding for half and hour or so
and it still smokes, you might have piston ring problems. If you can
get ahold of a compression tester you can pull the spark plugs out and
test the compression with the engine warmed up and the throttle wide
open. I would expect to see at least 150 psi from each cylinder...

No, you wouldn't change the ignition timing as far as I know. It's an
e;ectronic ignition system with some electronic circuitry that actually
seems to retard the spark at low RPM and then lets the ignition fire
earlier and earlier as the RPM increase...

The ignition advance circuitry wouldn't be getting more than about 12
or 13 volts when you're cranking the engine with the spark plugs out...

But the reason you should put the spark plugs into their caps and
ground them to the cylinder head so they will spark is to mave that
small spark gap at the plug be the place the spark jumps. If you leave
the spark plug leads disconnected and crank the engine over, the 25,000
to 40,000 volt secondary voltage could possibly jump from one winding
to another inside an ignition coil and ruin it...

 

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
NO! NO! DO NOT DO THIS! Cello's motorbike is a four-stroke V-twin. It's
NOT a 2-stroke!

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
NO! NO! DO NOT DO THIS! Cello's motorbike is a four-stroke V-twin. It's
NOT a 2-stroke!